Two new covers

I tried to do a cover of the Beatles classic Tax Man for tax day, but just like my real taxes, I missed the deadline. I finished the cover anyway, and I’m actually happy with how it turned out.

And then a few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to see Kenny Loggins perform live here in Vegas. It was great to see him perform all the songs I grew up singing. But for me the highlight was This is It. I decided to cover it the very next day.

Say Something

Recently I decided to cover the Justin Timberlake song, Say Something. The original is an incredible piece of songwriting, and I wanted to see if I could capture some of the same energy. Like my recent Johnny Cash cover, I learned a ton about production from working on this.

In the past I've always worked with music producers. For all three No More Kings albums, that producer was Neil DeGraide, who was also my writing partner for all that stuff. For Diamondhead that producer was my friend Bill Zappia. When I decided to tackle The Man Comes Around, it was the first time that I tried to produce myself. Similarly, when I approached doing this Justin Timberlake cover, I decided to produce it myself.

Just like the Johnny Cash cover ended up sparking an entire new album of songs from me, I have a strange feeling I might do more with this song as well. But only time can tell.

The Man Comes Around

A while ago, after seeing the movie Logan for the fourth time, I was moved to cover the Johnny Cash Song, The Man Comes Around. The song is featured in the ending credits of the movie, and it fit perfectly. There was this mournful post-apocalyptic vibe that I loved.

So I decided to record my own cover version of the song, and make a music video for it. The video was more of an excuse to fly my new drone in the desert. The production of the cover itself was a lot of fun, and I learned a great deal about production, something I usually left to Neil or Bill.

Not long after this, I decided to make a sample pack of some of the sounds I accumulated during the recording of my cover version. The sample pack is extremely simple. Mostly sounds of me hitting my acoustic guitar in various ways. But what came next was the fun part.

I decided to make my own song using only the samples I had made for my pack. The process was so fun, that I ended up writing and recording an entire album in the cinematic, post-apocalyptic vibe. I'm finishing up that album now, but it's tentatively called In Measured Hundredweight and Penny Pound.